“Unbelievable. Snape was offering to help him? He was definitely offering to help him?”

“Yes, Snape was offering to help him!” said Harry. “Come on, Ron, this is the tenth time.”

“I’m only checking!” said Ron. “That conversation you overheard last night is incredible.”

At this moment, in the Gryffindor common room, Harry and Ron were playing wizard chess.

Evan curled up on the sofa next to the fire, looking intently at the parchment in his hand full of ancient magic runes.

The information recorded above was related to the demon altar, and he needed to confirm it again before taking any action.

After breakfast, Hermione and Elaine went back to their bedroom to catch up on some sleep.

Apparently, the two of them had stayed up very late last night.

After returning from Evan’s dormitory, Elaine didn’t go to bed right away but couldn’t resist “getting back” at Hermione a little.

When they saw them this morning, both of them looked like they hadn’t slept well.

As for what exactly they had done last night, Hermione only vaguely mentioned that they had “messed around in bed for a long time.”

Vampires were naturally nocturnal creatures, full of energy at night but weak and lethargic during the day.

No one could deny that Elaine was really troublesome.

Before leaving this morning, Colin kindly reminded Evan to be careful of Elaine.

She was very angry about their leaving the party yesterday without saying goodbye, and she kept muttering about “revenge”.

He didn’t even need to say anything, Evan had already suffered Elaine’s revenge…

This year, nearly all Hogwarts students had chosen to go home for Christmas.

After breakfast, only five students remained in the castle — Evan, Harry, Hermione, Ron, and Elaine — along with a few staff members.

Dumbledore was still nowhere to be seen, and it was unclear when he would return.

As soon as no one else was around, Harry repeated to Ron the conversation he had overheard the night before.

With the Christmas party over, Ron was now completely back to “normal”.

Perhaps Elaine was the only one who still refused to forgive him, but then again, the two of them had never interacted much anyway.

“Snape offering to help Malfoy — that’s pretty strange, isn’t it?” said Ron, directing his knight to attack Harry’s pawn. “Why would Snape want to help Malfoy?”

“He said he’d promised Malfoy’s mother to protect him for Malfoy’s parents’ sake.”

Listening to their conversation, Evan also found it puzzling and couldn’t help but ponder the question.

He remembered that it wasn’t just an ordinary oath — Snape had likely made an Unbreakable Vow with Malfoy’s mother, Narcissa.

Snape had used this magic to guarantee Malfoy’s safety and to complete Voldemort’s task — killing Dumbledore — if Malfoy failed.

That should have been the case, but neither Snape nor Malfoy had mentioned it last night.

That was strange. Had the Unbreakable Vow never actually been made?

Or was Snape simply being overly cautious and chose not to reveal it?

Evan thought back — there probably wasn’t an Unbreakable Vow.

Last night, after Snape said that he had sworn an oath to Malfoy’s mother, Malfoy’s response was that he didn’t believe in unbinding oaths. If an Unbreakable Vow had existed, he wouldn’t have said that.

Because an Unbreakable Vow could not be broken; the price of breaking it was death.

It seemed that some things had changed after Bellatrix had been captured and sent to Azkaban.

For the sake of their previous relationship, after Draco Malfoy received this impossible task from Voldemort, Narcissa still turned to Snape for help. He was the only one who could help Draco, but without the forceful presence of Bellatrix, there would naturally be no Unbreakable Vow.

“Pity you didn’t hear what Malfoy’s actually doing.”

“I couldn’t have done, could I? That was the whole point, he was refusing to tell Snape,” said Harry.

After a moment of silence, he turned to look at Evan, “Evan, do you have any guesses?”

“Plenty … any possibility could exist, but none can be confirmed.” Evan replied.

His plan was to let things run their course and let Malfoy fix the Vanishing Cabinet.

But he still needed to be careful because a lot of things had changed.

“From the information that has been confirmed so far, Malfoy has become a Death Eater, and Voldemort has given him a task,” Harry continued. This was what they had discussed in the empty classroom last night. “A task that must be completed in school. This is something that other Death Eaters cannot accomplish because they cannot come to Hogwarts. Malfoy’s student status can provide him with this convenience. Now we have to consider, what kind of task needs to be completed in school?”

Evan sighed; this part was almost word-for-word what Hermione had said.

He felt that given enough time, Hermione could probably figure out the truth.

For example, why did Snape suspect that Malfoy was behind Katie’s attack? Although Malfoy denied that he did it, Snape’s suspicion itself was very telling. This meant that the mission Malfoy received from Voldemort was related to the attack.

In other words, Malfoy’s mission was to kill someone.

At this point, there were only three people at Hogwarts worth killing from Voldemort’s perspective: Evan, Harry, and Dumbledore.

By analyzing each possibility, the final conclusion would become clear…

The reasoning process here made sense. As long as Hermione was given enough time and hints, she would be able to figure out the truth of the matter. Evan felt it necessary to talk to Hermione about his plan.

Fortunately, Harry and Ron hadn’t thought of this yet.

“You know,” Ron said, as if something had just occurred to him, “what if his task is to find something? Like, maybe there’s a powerful weapon hidden somewhere in the school, and You-Know-Who wants it. He ordered Malfoy to retrieve it for him. Do you guys remember Fred and George’s theory last year? A powerful weapon created by the Order of the Phoenix!”

A weapon, again with the weapon?!

Umbridge and Fudge’s Ministry had been utterly convinced of this idea. They firmly believed that Dumbledore was secretly developing a weapon at Hogwarts to use against them. But in the end, all she found in the Forbidden Forest was a giant; and she ended up being held captive by Grawp for so long that she suffered great physical and psychological trauma.

Well… in a way, for her, that was indeed a pretty powerful weapon.

Neither Evan nor Harry answered, and Ron continued on the topic excitedly, “Think about Dumbledore’s right hand. You all saw it, right? Those greenish curse marks on it. Only the most powerful magic can leave these marks. Do you think this has anything to do with that weapon?”

Hey there! Translating_Wizard here! Chapter 1623 just dropped on Patreon! If you've enjoyed reading and want to read more, I'd greatly appreciate your support ♡

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